Proliferation of smart phones, and their subsequent use to perform high data-rate communication, has resulted in an exponential growth in the volume of data flowing over wireless networks. The increased volume of data flowing over the networks is taxing the service providers and the legacy network infrastructure responsible for ensuring the data reliably flows for most, if not all, users.
Furthermore, the introduction of a new generation of mobile wireless networks based upon fourth generation (4G) mobile wireless standards (e.g., “Long Term Evolution” or “LTE” and Mobile WiMAX) and associated communications infrastructure has indeed substantially increased the throughput capabilities of mobile wireless networks for users that subscribe to and use 4G services. Thus, 4G technology has the capability of relieving the stresses currently being experienced by 3G systems arising from the proliferation of mobile wireless devices (e.g., smart phones, tablet computers, etc.).
While 4G networks, which provide substantially superior data rates and overall bandwidth compared to previous generations, are likely to be adopted by most mobile wireless data service users in the coming years, until such time the mobile wireless data network service providers are faced with the unenviable task of supporting multiple sets of network infrastructures.
At least one troublesome aspect of mobile wireless data networks that is enhanced when multiple generations of mobile wireless data service network infrastructure are concurrently supported is the need to provide backup network communications servers. Backup network communications servers, operating a vast majority of the time in a standby mode, ensure coverage for a geographic region (i.e., geo-redundancy) in case any corresponding primary/active network server fails. However, maintaining a corresponding backup/standby node for each functional node on a mobile wireless network becomes very expensive. Mobile wireless network service providers not only make substantial expenditures for physical backup/standby servers and their associated software, they also must cover substantial ongoing costs since the machines running the standby nodes require air conditioned/controlled space, electricity, maintenance, and employees to configure and monitor the physical equipment.
Known approaches to providing geo-redundancy are often costly and/or of limited scope. One approach involves configuring/running a hot standby copy for a particular instance of an active network node (e.g., a home agent). In such redundancy configurations, the hot standby copy maintains state information on a real-time basis for every session maintained on a corresponding primary server.